Dragon Quadrant (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 2) Read online

  Tolvern thought Drake was taking a big risk. Those six sloops might not be an entire fleet, but they might prove critical in the fight at Singapore. If the general flew off in a huff, Drake’s forces would suffer a great loss.

  “Perhaps my original proposal was overly demanding,” Mose Dryz said at last. “Let me propose a new agreement.”

  They’d come to a halt on the far end of the engineering bay, near stacks of tyrillium armor shipped over from Dreadnought’s hold. Enough to cobble together some second-rate shields until they could reach Samborondón. The general put his enormous hand, with its long, thin fingers, on top of his head in what was a curiously human-like gesture of thought. He was obviously still working it out.

  “I will escort Captain Tolvern to Samborondón while you approach Singapore. Do not fight the enemy fleets on your own.”

  “That is not your decision,” Tolvern said. “We don’t command you, and you don’t command us.”

  Mose Dryz continued as if he hadn’t heard. “While Tolvern is repairing the ship and taking the fugitives into custody, I will collect more warships.”

  “How many?” Drake said, tone cautious and uncommitted.

  “I can promise thirty sloops.”

  Tolvern blinked. “That’s . . . a good fleet.”

  “You have this many ships?” Drake asked.

  “Yes, if I take everything under my command. And I do mean everything. I would have nothing to fight either Apex or the Hroom death cult. When I come back, we will fight to free Singapore from the harvester ship. I will place myself and my ships under your command, Admiral.”

  “And in return,” Drake said, “I will be obligated to return to Hroom territory as soon as Singapore is free?”

  “Yes, you will use all of the resources of Albion to cleanse the Hroom worlds of Apex.”

  The admiral looked thoughtful. “You know this wasn’t my plan. We discussed it last time you visited me on Dreadnought.”

  “I know. You want to hunt down the Apex home world and devastate it.”

  Tolvern drew a breath. Was that Drake’s idea? It was audacious, but if what they knew about the buzzards was accurate, such a victory would win the war. A species that considered itself the apex predator, feeding on the weak while it gained strength to attack the strong, would see a successful attack on its home world as the ultimate act of defiance. It would buy Albion respect, and with it, time.

  “And I still believe in that plan,” Drake said, “as you must know. Aren’t you afraid that I’ll make a promise and back out of it?”

  “Of course I am worried. Humans are notorious liars. But you seem to be an honorable man, James Drake. We have worked together, and you have told me the truth several times where lies would have served you better.”

  “What do you think?” Drake asked Tolvern.

  The easy answer was that she preferred the idea of thrashing Apex in their home system. The thought of flying Blackbeard among a powerful Albion force with thirty sloops of war to lend additional firepower was exhilarating. Throw in the Singaporean technology, and they’d smash the buzzards once and for all.

  But if they first crushed Apex at Singapore and swept the buzzards from the Hroom systems, that would be a great victory, too. Bring the Hroom civil war to an end, then send a massive fleet into enemy territory to finish the job. Forget buying a few generations, how about wiping the buzzards out altogether? The universe would not miss them.

  “How do we know you can deliver?” she asked the general.

  “Hroom are poor liars,” Mose Dryz said. “We rarely attempt it, and we succeed even more infrequently.”

  “You’re sincere—I can hear it in your tone. But I doubt you can deliver thirty sloops of war. You told us that your entire fleet only numbers twenty sloops.”

  “Eighteen. But I believe I can get as many as fifteen more if I can convince a neutral faction to join me.”

  Tolvern laughed. “So you were lying.”

  The pink color faded from the general’s face, leaving him almost white for a moment before his color returned. “I did not lie.”

  “You made it sound like you had thirty sloops to turn over, when you’ve only got eighteen, and that includes the six we can already see.”

  “I truly believe I can convince them to join us. I have a plan!” He sounded outraged and humiliated at the same time.

  “Maybe it wasn’t a lie,” Drake said with a smile, “but you were dissembling. I’ll make a strategist out of you yet.”

  Mose Dryz made a curious whistling sound. “Well? What about it?”

  “If we make a deal,” he said, “how long would it take you to deliver on your end of the bargain?”

  “I will be back in three weeks with your sloops. You and I must work out a way to learn of your whereabouts before I depart or we will never be able to rendezvous.”

  Drake held out his hand, which his counterpart took, enveloping the admiral’s hand with his long fingers.

  “General, if you can get me thirty sloops of war in three weeks, you’ve got a deal.”

  #

  “You can’t be happy to lose the six sloops you already have,” Tolvern told Drake after the general had returned to his command ship.

  “Not happy at all. But I’ll manage. HMS Dreadnought can hold her own.”

  “So I have noticed.”

  The admiral and his captain walked the corridor toward the bridge. Most of the crew had served under Drake, and they greeted him warmly whenever they passed. Some forgot to salute, but clapped him on the shoulder and grinned like they were old friends instead of admiral and subordinate.

  “Besides, I’m not looking for a major naval engagement,” Drake said when the two of them were free again. They stopped in front of the door to the bridge. “Not yet. I’m attempting to stay alive until the rest of you get back. Do just enough fighting to convince Li that we’re serious. I won’t get into a full-fledged battle until I have all available forces. Or so I hope.” He hesitated. “I sent a subspace to Captain McGowan, ordering his task force to this system.”

  “Then the enemy knows, as well,” she said.

  “I know, and I hope it wasn’t a mistake. Not because I’m worried about giving ourselves away—Apex already knows we’re here, and soon they’ll have a good idea that we intend to free Singapore. My worry is about McGowan. Have I set Peerless up for an ambush?”

  “McGowan is clever,” Tolvern said. “He’ll know the risk and take precautions.”

  “McGowan’s fleet is protecting the home worlds. As soon as Peerless ships out, there will be nothing but a few orbital fortresses and a handful of destroyers standing in the way of a direct assault on Albion. We might win at Singapore only to find the kingdom devastated and harvester ships feasting on the remnant.”

  Drake led her onto the bridge. Tolvern studied his face as they entered and he settled into his old seat with a sigh. The others on the bridge sprang to their feet and surrounded him, chattering excitedly.

  “It is very good to see you, Admiral,” Smythe said, saluting. “Wait until you see the modifications to the defense computer. Lomelí is a genius.”

  “Oh, don’t exaggerate,” the young woman said, blushing. “It’s only—”

  Someone else talked over her. “Barker has a new torpedo array that—”

  “. . . logical to arrange it that way because—”

  “. . . the buzzards’ deficits in detection—”

  Everyone was shouting at once, except for Nib Pym, and he was making an excited humming noise in the back of his throat that provided a soundtrack to the other noise.

  “Can I get you anything, m’lord?” Capp asked in a loud voice. “Tea? Brandy? A pipe?”

  “Some earplugs?” Drake said.

  “Everyone quiet down, please,” Tolvern said, embarrassed.

  “Can someone tell me why my ship is in such rotten shape?” Drake asked when the noise had calmed down. “Did you sell the other engine for scrap, or did so
meone steal it when you weren’t looking?”

  Tolvern had already passed along the ship logs during her visit to Dreadnought, but he listened as Smythe and Capp took turns telling about the battle with Apex when they’d lost Swift, then chattered on about the various other scrapes and narrow escapes since they’d seen him last.

  “Ah, so carelessness is the answer,” Drake said. “I might have known the lot of you would come to no good.” His tone turned serious. “I hate that we lost Swift. That was a blow.”

  “I don’t know how they found us,” Tolvern said. “Apex has poor detection technology, and we were traveling cloaked and in silence.”

  “Never discount the effect of luck in war,” he said. “And most of the time it’s bad luck and seems to help the enemy.”

  “It was bad luck for Swift, all right,” Tolvern said. “She’d already survived one encounter with the buzzards. A second encounter was too much. What about you? What have you been doing all these months?”

  “We’ve certainly had our adventures. Perhaps not as harrowing as your own.”

  Drake shared a few, starting with a skirmish with Hroom death cultists Dreadnought’s first week out of port. On another occasion, the admiral sent a missile frigate to buy supplies from a mining colony while the rest of the fleet waited, cloaked, a few hundred thousand miles away. Some bold pirates put together a small fleet and tried to charge in under the frigate’s missile batteries and seize her as a prize. Were they ever surprised when Dreadnought dropped her cloaks and showed her main guns.

  “We hung a few pirates that day,” Drake said. “And the ones who got away will be a little more wary in the future.”

  He spent a few more minutes chatting with his old crew, then rose. “Well, I’m afraid I must be going. Capp, tell Lieutenant Manx that I’ll be back on board Dreadnought in one hour. I want all preflight checks completed and the fleet ready to go by my return.”

  “Aye, Cap’n. Er, Admiral! Sorry, sir.”

  The admiral only smiled at this. There were disappointed comments all around as he made his final farewells. More than a few must be thinking how nice it would be to have Drake back in the captain’s chair. Tolvern might have felt slighted by this, but she shared the sentiment.

  “Captain,” Drake said, “will you accompany me to the science lab? I need to talk with Brockett before I go.”

  Chapter Nine

  Science Officer Brockett was studying feathers under a microscope when they arrived, and didn’t look up even after Tolvern repeatedly cleared her throat.

  “Brockett,” she said sternly.

  “Oh, sorry, Captain. I’m just . . . Admiral Drake! My apologies, sir.”

  Tolvern gestured at the feathers. “Anything new?”

  “I’m taking a break from studying the Apex substance Carvalho took from the hull. Studying the data, that is. I don’t have the substance itself anymore.”

  Drake frowned, so Tolvern explained what Carvalho had discovered while he was out on the hull trying to free Blackbeard from the battle station’s tether. She wouldn’t risk keeping it on board, and had ordered Brockett to incinerate it.

  “It’s a shame we don’t have it for further study,” Drake said.

  “They weren’t flinging space snot at us for giggles,” Tolvern said. “I’ve got to assume it’s something very bad.”

  “Such as?”

  “What if it turned into a corrosive acid and burned straight through the hull?”

  “A containment field?” Drake said.

  “I was in no position to mess around—fighting off boarders, battling the mutiny on Li’s station, preparing for battle with the buzzards.”

  “Understood,” Drake said. “You made a judgment call, one I probably would have made as well.” He glanced at the science officer. “You’ve had a chance to study the substance. Any theories on its purpose?”

  “Yes, sir. I broke down three samples, and it’s odd. The composition was changing from one test to the next. In the first one, it had incorporated molecules of our tyrillium armor. In the second and third, it seemed to be consuming part of the glass slides I’d put it on. This in spite of treating them with dyes and other chemicals. The snot wasn’t inert, is what I’m saying.”

  “So it was an acid?” Tolvern asked, surprised that it could be something so simple. “Just dissolving whatever it touched?”

  “Not dissolving, sir, incorporating. Turning into that substance, maybe. Like camouflage. If Carvalho had stumbled on it a few days later, we might not have detected it at all.” Brockett hesitated, and Tolvern sensed he was stepping onto shakier ground with his guessing. “What if the substance is designed to send a signal to the enemy? Allow them to track our ships wherever they go?”

  Tolvern remembered something. “Swift had been in a fight with Apex already. What if she took some space snot, and that’s how the aliens found us?”

  “We’ll implement a new protocol,” Drake said. “Immediately after any contact with the enemy, the crew will scour the surface of affected ships.”

  “And what about those of us who’ve already been in battle?” Tolvern asked. “Maybe half the fleet is already infected.”

  “If you’ll give me the resources, I can design a coherence scanning interferometer to scan the hulls,” Brockett said.

  “I have no idea what that means,” Drake said, “but if it will detect this alien substance, then go right ahead.”

  “The science is straightforward enough, but I could use Smythe’s engineering skills to make the instrument. If you can spare him, Captain.”

  “For this?” Tolvern said. “Of course.” Her mind drifted to something else that had been bugging her. “What do you two think about the strange dance with all of the lances and spears?”

  She summarized what she’d come to believe. There seemed to be two competing factions in the Apex fleet. Her evidence was the lack of coordination—at least in the initial stages of the fight—followed by all of the posturing, the bobbing and weaving. It had grown so confused that a collision destroyed one ship and led to another being swallowed by a harvester ship. The harvester spit out a new command vessel to replace it, and that was the point where the fighting stopped.

  “What’s got me confused is why they didn’t fight it out,” she said. “If there were two different factions, I don’t understand how they resolved their differences.”

  “That’s the definition of alien behavior,” Drake said. “If it mapped directly onto the human experience, they wouldn’t really be aliens, would they?”

  “What does that say about the Hroom? We can understand their motives easily enough, but they’re aliens.”

  “Are they?” he said. “You’ve got one serving as your pilot. I just cut a deal with a Hroom general, one where both sides clearly understood all the terms.”

  “You’re redefining what it means to be an alien,” Tolvern said.

  “Perhaps I am. A thousand years ago our ancestors would have called the Singaporeans’ ancestors aliens. Now they’re just another flavor of human. Different, but not inscrutable. Why not extend the same privilege to the Hroom? If we’re going to live side by side as civilizations, it seems to be a necessity, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Excuse me,” Brockett said, “but if you mean that alien behavior is unintelligible, then Apex aren’t aliens either.”

  The other two looked at him, and Brockett continued. “Apex behavior has counterparts in the animal kingdom. Not a mirror of any one species, but with elements of several. Once you piece that together, you can figure out what’s going on.”

  “Go on,” Drake said.

  “Start with ritual combat, which is common in the animal kingdom, even in early human tribes, who displayed more chest thumping and spear waving than actual violence. When two small tribes get together, an actual fight that leaves ten or twenty dead on each side can devastate both. Packs of lions and wolves do the same thing. More roaring and posturing than killing.”

  �
�It looked like posturing, all right,” Tolvern agreed. “Like flocks of birds going back and forth trying to intimidate each other.”

  “We already know that Apex has castes,” Brockett continued. “There are the commander types and the more numerous drone types in all their variations. They’ve genetically engineered themselves, but I’ll bet the castes represent an ancestral condition. Roughly speaking, you have queens and you have sterile workers.”

  “Like bees or ants,” Tolvern said. “Is that what you mean?”

  “Exactly. Social insects, but played out in flocks of birds instead of invertebrates. Why not? Some birds have colonies, and it’s something that could have developed in bird life as easily as among insects. And as predators, birds have an advantage over other animals. They are swifter and more mobile. Only gravity limits them, and in a low-gravity, high-oxygen environment, you’d expect the top predator, the apex predator, to be a bird. In this case, flocks of birds.”

  “I’m confused about the ritual warfare part,” Drake said. “Human tribes that engaged in that sort of nonsense lost out over the long run to larger and better organized societies. Tribes lost to chiefdoms, which were overwhelmed by city states backed by agriculture, and so on up to multi-world kingdoms and empires. How can Apex compete on a colony or tribal level?”

  “Think of the birds more like horse raiders from the steppes,” Brockett said. “Nomads have frequently overrun settled societies in the past.”

  “But the buzzards aren’t true nomads,” Tolvern said. “They’ve got a technological society, which means they have resources to guard, some sort of home world or system.”

  Brockett looked uncertain. “You might be right.”

  “If there is a home world, we’ll find it and burn it,” Drake said grimly. Then fresh doubt showed on his face. “Back to the ritual posturing. This was the battlefield. Why would they risk it here and now? They might have won otherwise.”